Wrapped in wool: Yarn-bomb at playground encourages kids to get outdoors

Good yarn: 14-year-old Ilyas playing with a knitted cow at the KIDS Adventure Play. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

Pink cows, pom-poms and knitted swings delighted children this month when a surprise ‘yarn-bomb’ struck the KIDS adventure playground in Upper Clapton.

The playground, which sits next to the River Lea at the bottom of Springfield Park, provides frontline services to local disabled children and their parents or carers.

National charity KIDS seeks to help disabled young people up to 25 by developing skills and abilities, with an emphasis on ‘positive play’.

As a treat for the children, centre managers decided to yarn-bomb the playground, a form of street art where knitted or crotcheted yarn is wrapped around trees and structures to revitalise public spaces. The playground was also opened to the wider general public for the day.

Children play with staff member Julian Danquah at KIDS Adventure Play. Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

Stratford-based knitwear designer Katie Jones and her team helped cover the trees, swings and even a giant cow with skeins of knitted yarn.

The yarn-bomb created a riot of colour but the woolly wrappings also aimed to show that children should be out in the fresh air and not kept indoors.

Claira Scott-Gray, playground manager, said: “We want to raise awareness of our policy to give our kids the space and time to play; the chance to explore and take risks.

“We want to ask the local community to get behind our amazing play space for local disabled children and support it in any way they can.”

Photograph: Eleonore de Bonneval

Playground staff hoped that opening the centre to the general public would raise awareness of the centre’s value as a lifeline for disabled children and their parents.

KIDS Adventure Play is currently under financial strain and parents and carers fear the centre will be forced to close.

When the display is over the wool will be given to knitting supplies shop Wild and Woolly on Lower Clapton Road, who will use the wool to make scarves and hats for Hackney Winter Night Shelter.